When was the last time you burned your wife's thumb trying to solder wires together. Since you only get to do that once, I made this tool to hold the wires together during the soldering process. It only takes 2 wooden cloths pins and a couple scraps of hard balsa or light ply to make, and never complanes when I touch it with a hot iron!

I use one and I have three complaints. It leaves marks on the insulation. It is very difficult to use with fine wires (which I tend to solder often) and it is nearly worthless with small pc boards.

Wooden clothes pins do work better for some of this and when I get home I will post an image of soldering to a tiny video camera using a clothes pin. I absolutely would not stick that into the helping hand device!

Aside from these complaints I do use the helping hand a lot, but only with thick wires for high amperage. My more delicate stuff is done with clothes pins or by hand. The very thin stuff solders almost instantly and the thin wires conduct very little heat to your fingers.

I also use the clothespins a lot. Sometimes just clamped in a vise. At times I get a block of wood and glue them at a specific angle for a certain job. I have small ones and large ones. Besides soldering helpers they make nice clamps

Oh, and silver soldering (brazing) is not good with wood clothespins. They tend to catch on fire unless a long way from the joint

The 'helping hands' rig is also usable with clothespins. Put one in each of the alligator clamps, then adjust as needed. That way you get the benefits of both.

And, when solldering three (or more) wires together you can glue multiple clothespins together, or to a popsicle stick, then clamp it to something solid.

I have done that, but once in a while, the allen heads still fall off the magnitized head...and always in an annoying place. I have never lost a screw using the silicone fuel line over the ball driver.

I use one and I have three complaints. It leaves marks on the insulation. It is very difficult to use with fine wires (which I tend to solder often) and it is nearly worthless with small pc boards.

Wooden clothes pins do work better for some of this and when I get home I will post an image of soldering to a tiny video camera using a clothes pin. I absolutely would not stick that into the helping hand device!

Aside from these complaints I do use the helping hand a lot, but only with thick wires for high amperage. My more delicate stuff is done with clothes pins or by hand. The very thin stuff solders almost instantly and the thin wires conduct very little heat to your fingers.

Pete

Sorry, I missed last night.

Here are two pix of stuff I prefer wooden clothes pins for. BTW, I have not yet flown this little camera. I want to put it into a Curtiss Pusher so I have a clear view forward.

Ever need to check the washout on a long wing with dihedral? Propping it up and checking the distance from board to LE then board to TE is one way, but my way is to rubber band a dowel to the bottom of the end of each wing, with excess poking out the back. Then you can eyeball the two dowels and see straight off if the angle of the wing ends is the same. It works well on flat-bottomed wings, but as long as there is a portion of flat somewhere on the bottom of the wing to set the dowels against, it should work.
The pics are of my 72" Fournier wing - it kept turning right on the first flight after an 18 month layup, with disastrous results! After warming and twisting, I now know the two wings have the same washout.

Images

Vintage, that looks like a piece of balsa. I do the same thing using a piece of paper. I just poke a hole in the paper the same size as the wire with a tapered needle and slip the paper onto the landing gear between the wheel and the washer to be soldered onto the wire landing gear, being sure to get a tight fit of the hole in the paper and the wire. I use rosin soldering paste. The paper (1) acts as a gasket to keep the heated soldering paste from running into the wheel and wire bearing surface (the hole in the wheel) and (2) the paper acts as a spacer to give just the right amount of clearance between the spinning wheel and the soldered washer. When finished, just tear the paper away from the axle. Works great!

I posted this in another thread but I thought it should be posted here also. To cut sticks to to the proper lenght and angle I first used a razor blade to roughly cut to length. I then use the a bench dog and a Perma-grit sanding block to fine tune it to length and angle. If I have a lot to cut to the same angle, the cross pieces on a tapered fuse, I will cut one piece and then put a wedge next to the fence and use it so that I can get constant angles and only have to worry about the length.

I learned this one from Ray at Skybench aerotech. Ziplock bags filled with sand make great weights for holding down wing sheeting and other uses. They conform to whatever shape they are over and don't gouge balsa or foam like hard weights. You can make all different sizes and weights.